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<a name="Callers"></a>
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<p>
Next: <a href="Subroutines.html#Subroutines" accesskey="n" rel="next">Subroutines</a>, Previous: <a href="Primary.html#Primary" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Primary</a>, Up: <a href="Call-Graph.html#Call-Graph" accesskey="u" rel="up">Call Graph</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>]</p>
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<hr>
<a name="Lines-for-a-Function_0027s-Callers"></a>
<h4 class="subsection">5.2.2 Lines for a Function&rsquo;s Callers</h4>

<p>A function&rsquo;s entry has a line for each function it was called by.
These lines&rsquo; fields correspond to the fields of the primary line, but
their meanings are different because of the difference in context.
</p>
<p>For reference, we repeat two lines from the entry for the function
<code>report</code>, the primary line and one caller-line preceding it, together
with the heading line that shows the names of the fields:
</p>
<div class="smallexample">
<pre class="smallexample">index  % time    self  children called     name
&hellip;
                0.00    0.05       1/1           main [2]
[3]    100.0    0.00    0.05       1         report [3]
</pre></div>

<p>Here are the meanings of the fields in the caller-line for <code>report</code>
called from <code>main</code>:
</p>
<dl compact="compact">
<dt><code>self</code></dt>
<dd><p>An estimate of the amount of time spent in <code>report</code> itself when it was
called from <code>main</code>.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code>children</code></dt>
<dd><p>An estimate of the amount of time spent in subroutines of <code>report</code>
when <code>report</code> was called from <code>main</code>.
</p>
<p>The sum of the <code>self</code> and <code>children</code> fields is an estimate
of the amount of time spent within calls to <code>report</code> from <code>main</code>.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code>called</code></dt>
<dd><p>Two numbers: the number of times <code>report</code> was called from <code>main</code>,
followed by the total number of non-recursive calls to <code>report</code> from
all its callers.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><code>name and index number</code></dt>
<dd><p>The name of the caller of <code>report</code> to which this line applies,
followed by the caller&rsquo;s index number.
</p>
<p>Not all functions have entries in the call graph; some
options to <code>gprof</code> request the omission of certain functions.
When a caller has no entry of its own, it still has caller-lines
in the entries of the functions it calls.
</p>
<p>If the caller is part of a recursion cycle, the cycle number is
printed between the name and the index number.
</p></dd>
</dl>

<p>If the identity of the callers of a function cannot be determined, a
dummy caller-line is printed which has &lsquo;<samp>&lt;spontaneous&gt;</samp>&rsquo; as the
&ldquo;caller&rsquo;s name&rdquo; and all other fields blank.  This can happen for
signal handlers.
</p>
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